Mary Eberstadt's Plenary address at the second National Conservatism Conference in 2021. "The woke claim to own you simply by virtue of your youth. You are overdue for upward moral mobility," she says.
As the election results of 2021 suggest a chill in the air for the left, the time has come to talk to younger voters—millennials and Generation Z—about America’s future. The message can be distilled in a single sentence: You’ve been robbed.
You have been robbed of something treasured by millions of less-literate Americans before you: knowledge and appreciation of your own country, and its symphonic, tumultuous, sometimes riven and always illuminating history.
According to some of today’s loudest and most influential voices, the U.S. is an irredeemable cesspool of racism and bigotry. This lie has resulted in a wide patriotism gap. In 2020, according to one poll, under a quarter of Democrats surveyed said they were extremely proud to be American, as opposed to almost three-quarters of Republicans. Only a third of Americans your age say the same.
